For many years, effort has been made to utilize the energy from the sun to produce electricity. It is well known that on a clear day the sun provides approximately one thousand watts of energy per square meter almost everywhere on the planet's surface. The historical intention has been to collect this energy by using, for example, an appropriate solar semiconductor device and utilizing the collected energy to produce power by the creation of a suitable voltage and to maximize amperage which is represented by the flow of electrons. However, to date, many photovoltaic cells typically have an overall efficiency as low as about 10–25%. In this regard, that means that when one thousand watts of energy are incident on a square meter of a typical photovoltaic cell, somewhere between about 100 and 250 watts of output energy power typically results. This typical low efficiency in solar cells has been a significant reason for the solar cell industry not growing faster. For example, it is relatively expensive to manufacture those semiconductor materials currently utilized for solar cells (e.g., crystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, cadmium sulfide, etc.) into solar panels (e.g., typically, a plurality of combined solar cells electrically connected together) which includes the high costs of forming the solar cell substrate materials themselves, the cost of modifying the substrate materials so that they can become photovoltaic (e.g., doping the semiconductor substrate material to create substrate p/n junctions, etc.), the placement of electron collecting grids on surfaces of the solar cells, manufacturing the solar cells into solar panels, etc.
For example, in regard to a first example of utilizing crystalline silicon, one traditional approach for manufacturing solar cells has included converting scrap silicon wafers from the semiconductor industry into solar cells by known techniques which include etching of the solar cells and subsequent processing of the silicon wafers so that they can function as solar cells. A second technique includes creating relatively thin layers of crystalline and/or amorphous silicon upon an appropriate substrate and then utilizing somewhat similar subsequent processing steps to those discussed above to result in a solar cell/solar panel. In each of these two general approaches to obtaining a suitable photovoltaic substrate, the semiconducting nature of the silicon is utilized so that when incident light strikes a doped (e.g., a p-type and/or an n-type doped material) silicon solar cell substrate material, the incident light can be at least partially absorbed (e.g., a photon of light corresponding to a certain amount of energy can be absorbed) into the silicon semiconductor. The absorbed photon results in a transfer of energy to the semiconductor and the transferred energy can result in electron flow in a circuit (e.g., along with, for example, paired electron holes flowing in an opposite direction). A flow of electrons is typically referred to as a current. Solar cells of this type also usually will have a particular voltage associated with the produced current. By placing or positioning appropriate metal collecting electrodes on, for example, the top and bottom of the silicon semiconductor material, the electrons produced can be extracted from the cell as current which can be used, for example, to power an appropriate external device and/or charge a battery. However, this entire process has historically been relatively inefficient, making the solar cell industry less than ideal.
Accordingly, there has been a long felt need to enhance the efficiency of solar cells so that the cost of electricity produced by the solar cell approach can be reduced and thus assist in making a meaningful impact on the world power supply by, for example, decreasing the world's dependency on fossil fuels and/or nuclear energy. The present invention satisfies this long felt need by a novel, simple and reliable approach.